Mrs Midnight and Other Stories (34 page)

He did not care to look too closely, but he took it to be some drunken vagrant, not simply because of the rags but because of the way it moved. It was swaying uneasily from side to side and waving its arms about. Unsworth told me that he was reminded of some long-legged insect, perhaps a spider, that has become stuck in a pool of jam and is making frantic efforts to escape from its entrapment. The thinness of those writhing legs and arms appalled him.

Unsworth started to run, but was brought up short by the sound of a cry. It was perfectly expressive, but so high above a human pitch that it resembled a dog whistle. It pierced his brain and stopped him from moving. The noise spoke to him of desolation and rage, like that of a child that has been left to scream in its cot, except that the cry was even more shrill and had no innocence to it. It was the shrieking fury of an old, old man. Unsworth found that his legs could not move. Looking behind him he saw that the stick creature had begun to stagger stiffly towards him, still uncertain on its feet, but with growing confidence.

A succession of little screams accompanied these staggering steps, which seemed to indicate that movement was causing it pain, but that it was determined to stir. With its long attenuated legs it began to make strides towards him. It was coming on, but still Unsworth told me, he could not stir, ‘like in those dreams, sir,’ he said, ‘when you want to fly but cannot’.

Suddenly the great bell of the Cathedral boomed out the hour of seven and Unsworth was released from his paralysis. He ran and ran until he reached the gatehouse at the eastern end of the close where he stopped for breath and looked back. The creature was no longer coming towards him. He could see its starved outline clearly against the last of the setting sun. It had turned south west and with long, slightly staggering strides was making its way, as Unsworth thought, towards the Deanery.

Let us now go there ourselves before whatever it was that Unsworth saw arrives.

Dean Coombe sups, as usual, with his wife and daughter. Conversation, even by Deanery standards, is not lively during this meal. It is plain to Mrs Coombe and her daughter Leonora that their master is preoccupied and anxious to escape from them into his study. Perhaps he has a sermon to write, thinks Mrs Coombe idly, half remembering a time when she interested herself passionately in his doings. Even the fact that her husband seems quite indifferent to her company no longer troubles her.

The Dean has barely taken his last mouthful when, with a muttered apology, he wipes his mouth with his napkin and excuses himself from the table. A few minutes later we find him in his study. A fire is glowing in the grate and an oil lamp illumines the desk on which it has been placed. Outside the uncurtained window dusk is falling rapidly over the Cathedral close.

The Dean begins to take several volumes down from his shelves. One of those he needs is on the very topmost shelf, and to obtain it he makes use of a set of library steps. He plucks the book from its eyrie and, for some moments. he leafs through it rapidly on the top of the steps until we hear a little sigh of satisfaction. He descends the steps with his book which he places beneath the lamp on his desk. The work is Barrett’s
Magus
and the page at which it is open has many sigils and diagrams printed on it. The Dean now takes the gold seal ring from his waistcoat pocket and begins to compare the design incised upon it with those in the book.

There is a rap at the door. The Dean looks up sharply and plunges the golden ring back into his pocket.

‘Yes!’ he says in a voice, half irritable, half fearful.

The door opens. It is his wife. She says: ‘Stephen, did you hear that dreadful noise just now?’

‘What noise, my dear?’

‘A sort of shrieking sound. From the close. Do you think it is those boys from the workhouse making a nuisance of themselves again? Hadn’t you better see what is going on?’

‘My dear, I heard nothing. Are you sure it wasn’t a bird of some kind?’

‘No, of course, it wasn’t a bird. It was nothing like a bird. I would have said if it was a bird. Are you sure you heard nothing?’

‘Quite sure, my dear,’ says Dean Coombe in his mildest voice, though inwardly he seethes with impatience. The truth is, he
has
heard something, but he does not want to prolong the conversation with his wife. Mrs Coombe expresses her incredulity with a pronounced sniff and leaves the room, shutting the door in a marked manner.

As soon as she has gone, the Dean has taken the ring from his pocket once again and begins to pore over the designs in the book. So intent is he on his studies that at first he really does not hear the odd crackling noise that begins to manifest itself outside his window. It is a sound like the snapping of dry twigs. Slowly, however, he becomes vaguely aware of some mild irritant assaulting the outer reaches of his consciousness, but he applies himself all the more ferociously to his research. Then something taps on his window.

Startled he looks up. What was it? The beak of a bird? There it is again! No, it is not a bird. Some sort of twig-like object or objects were rattling against the pane. Perhaps his wife had been right and it was those wretched workhouse boys up to their pranks. Dean Coombe goes to the window and opens it.

It was at this moment that a Mrs Meggs happened to be passing the Deanery. She was the wife of a local corn merchant and a woman of irreproachable respectability. I had the good fortune to interview her at some length about what she saw that evening, and, after an initial reluctance, she proved to be a most conscientious witness.

Despite the gathering dusk, she told me, there was still light enough to see by. What she saw first was something crouching in the flower bed below the window of the Dean’s study. It appeared to be a man in rags, ‘though ’twas all skin and bone, and more like a scarecrow than a living being,’ she told me. The man’s hands were raised above his head, and with his immensely long and narrow fingers he appeared to be rattling on the Dean’s window. Then Mrs Meggs saw the Dean open the window and look out, ‘very cross in the face,’ as she put it. Immediately the figure that had been crouched below the window sill reared up and appeared to embrace the Dean with its long thin arms. It might have looked like a gesture of affection except that for a moment Mrs Meggs saw the expression on Dean Coombe’s face which, she said, was one of ‘mortal terror’.

‘Next moment,’ Mrs Meggs told me, ‘the thin fellow in rags had launched himself through the window after the Dean and I heard a crash inside. Then I heard some shouting and some words, not distinct, but I do remember hearing the Dean cry out, “God curse you, take your ring back, you fiend!” And I remember thinking such were not the words that should be uttered by a man of God, as you might say. Then comes another crashing, and a cry such as I never hope to hear again as long as I live. It was agony and terror all in one. Well, by this time I was got to the door of the Deanery and banging on it with my umbrella for dear life. The maid lets me in, all of a flutter, and when we come to the Dean’s study, Mrs Dean and Miss Leonora the Dean’s daughter, were there already, and Miss Leonora screaming fit to wake the dead. And who could blame her, poor mite? For I saw the Dean and he was all stretched back in his chair, his head twisted, and his mouth open and black blood coming out of it. There was no expression in the eyes, for he had no eyes, but only black and scorched holes as if two burning twigs had been thrust into their sockets.’

Only one thing remains to tell. At the Dean’s funeral in the Cathedral some weeks later it was noticed that, though the widow was present, Dean Coombe’s daughter, Leonora was not. However, as the congregation were leaving the Cathedral after the service, they heard a cry in the air above them. Looking up they saw a tiny figure on the south tower of the west front. It appeared to be that of a woman waving her arms in the air. Some of the more sharp sighted among the crowd recognised the figure as that of Miss Leonora Coombe.

In horrified impotence they watched as Leonora mounted the battlements of the tower and hurled herself off it onto the flagstone path at the base of the Cathedral. Her skirts billowed out during the fall but did nothing to break it, and, as she descended all the rooks in the elms of the close seemed to rise as one and set up their hoarse cries of ‘kaa, kaa, kaa’.

When Leonora hit the ground her head was shattered, and the only mercy of it was that she had died instantly.

Later, in recalling this final episode of the tragedy, several witnesses quoted to me, as if compelled by some inner voice, those final words of the 137th psalm:

‘Happy shall he be that taketh thy children and dasheth them against the stones.’

IV

A silence followed the reading, one of those silences which demonstrates that the audience has been deeply involved, albeit somewhat reluctantly where Corcoran was concerned, in what had been read. He felt oddly drained by the experience. It was old age, he told himself; he was not used to late nights. He gave courteous thanks to Parsons the reader, and Carter-Benson, the organiser and left hurriedly. As he drove up the Banbury Road to his little house in North Oxford, he noted that there was a cloudless sky and a full moon. He found it hard to rid himself of the feeling that it had all been meant, and that A.C. Lincoln had spoken to him that night.

In the Spring vacation the Giacometti Crucifixion came to St Paul’s College and was dedicated in the chapel at a pompous ceremony attended by various dignitaries including Sir Bromley Larsen himself. Dr Corcoran was also present to observe proceedings with a critical eye.

The service was at noon, and afterwards, it being a fine day, there were drinks in the Fellow’s Garden before a lavish buffet lunch which had been laid out in Hall. Professor Drew, the Master, was at his most magisterially amiable; even his wife Barbara smiled. (Only she knew that she was about to be elevated to the House of Lords.) If there was a slight shadow cast over this ‘establishment junket’, as Corcoran rather cynically called it, it had to do with the Crucifixion itself.

The Burne-Jones tapestry had been removed on the Master’s instructions, and the plain wall behind the altar had been revealed. Many thought that the building lost a certain warmth as a result, but this was to be expected. What did come as a surprise was the strange oblong leaden plate which had been let into the wall directly behind the altar and about five foot above the ground. On it a simple inscription had been incised:

A.C. LINCOLN 1852-1934

It was clear that Lincoln’s body was entombed behind this plaque. This came as a surprise to all who assumed that he had been buried beneath the elaborately inscribed marble slab in the ante-chapel. Researches in the college archives revealed that Lincoln himself had made these arrangements before his death and at the same time it was discovered that the Burne-Jones tapestry had been bought and given to the college as a perpetual gift by Lincoln himself. The object therefore could not, as the Master had hoped, be sold for an extravagant sum to Andrew Lloyd-Webber.

Even the Master had to admit that the presence of Lincoln’s sepulchre directly behind the Giacometti was an unwelcome distraction, not as bad as the Burne-Jones would have been, certainly, but still considerable.

As for the Crucifixion itself, Corcoran had to admit that it had a certain power. Giacometti’s characteristically elongated and corrugated figure was spread-eagled onto a plain cross of tubular steel, the head with its knifelike profile dropping down to one side, the crown of thorns subtly indicated by a few sharp excrescences emerging from the top of the head. It was a searing image of suffering and degradation, but, thought Corcoran, it had little to say about humanity, or the greatness of sacrifice. Corcoran knew this to be a rather old-fashioned view so he kept it to himself, even from Bigby the chaplain who was very happy that day. For once he was very nearly the centre of attention.

As Corcoran strolled about the Fellow’s Garden among the well dressed people sipping glasses of the college’s best Cliquot, he heard one of the junior fellows murmur to another that the Giacometti did rather remind him of ‘a stick insect nailed to a drain pipe’. A stick insect! Of course! Corcoran made a note of the simile. It was in many ways an unjust comparison. Corcoran knew that, but there was enough validity in it for him to take it up without compunction as a weapon in the battle he was going to wage.

Then he saw the Master waving at him and beckoning him over to a small huddle of people that included the master’s wife, Barbara and Sir Bromley Larsen.

Sir Bromley was a man of legendary wealth, but he could have easily passed unrecognised in a crowd. He had a bald, egg-shaped head and small undistinguished features. He must have been in his mid to late forties, but his age seemed as indeterminate as his features. A thin, fixed smile was on his face.

‘Ah, there you are, Corcoran,’ said the Master. ‘Sir Bromley was saying how he remembers you when he was at St Paul’s. You were Dean at the time, weren’t you? In charge of disciplinary matters?’

‘I was Dean, but I can’t say I recall . . .’

‘Bromley was telling me how you nearly had him sent down,’ said the Master. ‘What was it for, then? Some drunken prank, eh?’ Sir Bromley said nothing. He merely went on smiling, primly, smugly.

‘I really don’t remember,’ said Corcoran, but just after he had said it, he did recollect an incident involving Larsen. It was nothing to do with drink, though; he had an idea that it concerned a forged signature on a cheque.

‘Dr Corcoran here doesn’t approve of our new acquisition,’ said Barbara, gleaming triumphantly. ‘Do you, George?’

The Master looked rather embarrassed by his wife’s intervention; but Sir Bromley seemed pleased.

‘On the contrary, Mrs Drew,’ said Corcoran suavely, ‘I have always maintained that the Giacometti is a remarkable work of art,’ then turning to Sir Bromley, ‘how did you acquire it, I wonder?’

Sir Bromley appeared slightly troubled by the question. The Master, becoming aware of this said: ‘Aha! Luncheon beckons, I believe!’—and everyone began to move towards the Hall.